Many Russians associate Olivier salad with a New Year's feast or with a dinner party. There are several recipes for this dish, but most housewives make the same mistakes. It is worth paying attention to this. And the taste of the dish will immediately change for the better.
Many housewives do not prepare the Olivier salad correctly. There is no single recipe for a popular dish. Its creator never revealed this secret. Many options for preparing a salad were invented. But common mistakes prevent you from achieving the perfect taste.
Use only mayonnaise
Most housewives fill Olivier with mayonnaise. It is very convenient. You just need to squeeze the sauce out of the package and stir the salad. But in this case, the dish turns out to be too fatty, heavy for digestion. After a feast, stomach discomfort may occur. To make "Olivier" lighter, you can dilute mayonnaise with low-fat sour cream or heavy cream in a 1: 1 ratio. Some chefs dress this salad with Greek yogurt. This is easy to replicate at home. Greek yogurt is thicker and denser than usual. If it is difficult to find it on sale, you can use a natural fermented milk product, having previously laid it out for 4-5 hours in a colander covered with gauze. Restaurant-grade "Olivier" is made with homemade mayonnaise. You can make a refueling 2-3 days before the meal. It keeps well in the refrigerator.
Add cooked sausage
In the original "Olivier" fillet of hazel grouse was used as a meat component. The French chef who invented this dish also added boiled crayfish tails to it. These exotic ingredients are expensive and difficult to find in stores. But the salad can be prepared with the addition of boiled beef, chicken, tongue. A big mistake is preparing a dish with boiled sausage. Even the beloved "Doktorskaya" is not a substitute for real meat. Sausage began to be put in salad in Soviet times, as it was easier to get. Now there are no problems with this, so every housewife can please loved ones with real meat "Olivier".
Too many potatoes
There are a lot of hearty potato salads in cookbooks, but Olivier is not one of them. In a pre-revolutionary cookbook, a recipe was published in which 5 potatoes are needed for 5 servings of a dish. But at that time, the salad was laid out in layers. The potatoes were sliced differently to create different layers. In Soviet times, the layer feed was abolished. But the hostesses still tried to put more potatoes in the "Olivier" so that it turned out to be more satisfying and inexpensive. Other products were hard to come by. Modern chefs prefer to put less potatoes in the legendary salad. For 10 servings, 5 medium-sized tubers are enough. Due to the excess of potatoes, the dish turns out to be starchy, too satisfying. This ingredient interrupts the taste of other products, a lot of mayonnaise is absorbed into it, so the consumption of the sauce immediately increases, which is not at all desirable.
Few eggs
The addition of boiled eggs to the salad gives it a special tenderness. Many housewives prefer to save on this ingredient. But this is a big mistake. There should be a lot of eggs in Olivier. For 10 servings, you need to take at least 4 pieces. It is better to use homemade eggs. Their yolk is very tasty, has a rich color. For the salad, you need to boil hard-boiled eggs.
Canned peas
Many housewives put canned peas in "Olivier" and do not even imagine that this dish turns out to be much tastier with a fresh or frozen product. In Soviet times, it was easier to get canned peas. There were no frozen vegetables on the shelves. Now these ingredients can be bought at any time of the year. To please and surprise loved ones, guests, it is worth preparing "Olivier" with frozen peas, after defrosting it at room temperature. Excess moisture must be drained off. In this case, the salad will acquire freshness and a special taste, devoid of the obsessive sweetness characteristic of a canned delicacy.
